Following the lifting of a court order preventing the reporting of legal arguments heard in the absence of the jury during the Belfast rape trial, Frank Greaney joined OTB AM this morning.
New details regarding comments from the judge about the attendance of Irish rugby captain Rory Best at the first day of the trial were revealed yesterday.
The judge told jurors that the rugby player had attended after being "directed" to do so by senior counsel after barristers suggested that the judge should make the statement following a strong public reaction to the publication of images of the hooker walking into court.
"He [the barister] was worried that what happened with Rory Best and the backlash that his attendance received on social media and elsewhere was that it would dissuade character witnesses from coming forward," Mr Greaney told Off The Ball.
The courts correspondent also clarified that while Mr Best was named as a possible character witness during the pre-trial phase, that fact could not have been reported.
His connection with the trial only became public knowledge after he was photographed attending the trial.
"My criticism, criticism is maybe a strong word, but I thought that if he had been, and I've no reason to think that he wasn't, but if he had been directed to be there by senior counsel, I don't know why that wasn't explained sooner than it was," Mr Greaney told Off The Ball.
"We don't know why Rory Best decided not to give evidence in the end. It was never confirmed that he would give evidence, none of the character witnesses were confirmed. The jurors were simply told at the outset that they may hear from the likes of Rory Best and Ruan Pienaar and so on," he added.
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